Retrospection
by JackSparrowsBooty
Summary: 10 short drabbles that are timed with the duration of songs on shuffle. Featuring Amanda, Steve, Jesse, and Mark in typical situations. No pairings or warnings.


1. Pick a fandom you like

2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.

3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it ends.

4. No lingering afterwards.

5. Do 10 of these and post them.

1. Blue Monday - Orgy

Jesse stares into the men's room mirror—gloom intensified in his expression by the cast of shadows around him. It never fails that Monday turns out to be the day he endures numerous amounts of disgruntled patients and that the only individual who seems to have her wits about her is the only terminal one. Never ceases to be the sick, sad reality that he lives in at Community General.

He allows cold water to soak his fingers before he scrubs them over his face. _Wake up, Travis_, he thinks to himself. _Day's not over._

2. Myth - Beach House

"That's a myth," Amanda crows from the opposite side of the nurse's station. She raises her thin, dark eyebrows at her colleague who sits leaned into the chair, comfortably kicked back. He appears rather pleased with himself, even if he knows all too well the validity of her words.

"Says who?" Jesse responds, threading his fingers behind his blond head.

"Conventional science. I don't know, uh, logic?"

He smiles broadly, quite smug in her opinion.

Mark wanders by, hardly glancing their direction, an undetectable grin upturning his lips. "Jess' talking about the full moon tonight? It's supposed to get pretty hairy in here."

Amanda scowls at them both.

3. Man Next Door - Massive Attack

Just when he thinks he knows someone, Mark is proven wrong. Despite being an occasional acquaintance to the young, successful millionaire CEO next to his beach house, he'd been forced to rethink his opinion of the aspiring business man who had been silently led from his house in stainless steel handcuffs.

Mark had been the one to respond to the call of a sexual assault when the paramedics wheeled the gurney into his emergency room. The teenage girl had been beaten until she danced in the realm of death. Somehow, with the assistance of his faithful band of medical personnel and the LAPD's sex crimes team, they'd managed to save her life and take her statement.

Mark would never have put the pieces together that the man he'd considered a friend within the fringes of his circle would be capable of such depravity, especially to a girl hardly into her seventh grade year of middle school.

It just makes his careful attention to the wide selection of friends more imperative than ever.

4. Dance of Death - Andrew Bird

They'd been there before. A patient lying on their table, completely vulnerable and at their mercy. Depending, relying, begging for them to protect them and bring them back from the brink of death. It is a sobering experience to hold someone's organs in their hand, to be covered in their blood. Feel it struggle to live, to move, the slowing pulse of a dying heart.

5. In the Cold, Cold Night - The White Stripes

It's a rainy December evening. He's not typically one to breach habits, so he's not sure why he's sitting in this particular bar. He rarely drinks anyway, but the urge to expand his horizon of friends is strong tonight. If he's not surrounded by his doctor friends or his father, he's around his cop buddies.

Tonight Steve needs reprieve from his normal existence. Even at the bar, his peripheral vision fires on all cylinders, reminding that even out of his element he still thinks and operates like a detective. He can't help it.

6. Get it Wrong, Get it Right - Feist

Jesse finds himself slinking into the lounge, his nerves so completely shot that he collapses into the sofa located in the middle of the room as if he has no control of all his joints. He'd nearly lost his patient by failing to notice that red sticker buried in the man's medical records that said in big, bold letters 'MORPHINE' indicating a life-threatening allergy to the drug. All he'd needed to see were the red welts to realize his mistake. Anaphylactic shock had not yet set in when he frantically stopped the drip and immediately began an antihistamine dosage and a shot of epinephrine.

The man had no idea how close he'd been to death. Jesse did know, and still felt the tremors in his fingers.

7. Flower to Hide - The Catherine Wheel

The surf's high and Mark knows that Jesse can't help himself. He's drawn to the ocean and rides the waves like he's been doing this his entire life. Mark watches from the shore, admiring the young doctor's ability to learn so quickly. Pretty impressive considering he's from the Midwest and had never even laid eyes on the sea before his move out to Los Angeles. There's something about Jesse's personality that has a tendency to grate on people's nerves, but also endears to them in the same breath.

Mark winces when he watches the young man's feet falter on the board and he tips backward into the rolling waves of the Pacific. His gaze refuses to shift until he sees the blond head break the surface.

He's not really surprised that Jesse has managed to find a place in his life, in his home, as a close friend to not only him, but his son as well.

8. If I Needed You - Andrew Bird

"Jesse, if I needed your help, I would damn well know how to ask," Steve snaps at his young friend as they stroll quickly down the hallway of the ground floor of the all too familiar hospital in a very familiar scenario. A suspicious death and the doctor's heightened curiosity piercing the periphery of his police work.

Jesse falters only for a moment. "You need my help, Steve. I was the only one in that room close enough to hear her dying declaration. I'm your most reliable witness."

"When I need you, I'll let you know." Steve strode through the ambulance bay, aggravation rolling off of him in waves.

9. Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis

She stands not quite tall enough to meet Amanda's chin, but the young woman with wild auburn curls holds a ridiculously large butcher knife to her throat. Instead of the normal feelings of fear consuming her thoughts, Amanda can't help the exasperation and disbelief. She scoffs, rolling her deep brown eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me," the pathologist laments, thinking of the absurdity of the situation.

"You and Dr. Sloan need to stay away from me! I'm being framed!"

"Holding a knife to my neck is not exactly helping your case, Chelsea," Amanda says calmly, hands at her sides.

Steve silently moves up behind her and tackles the woman to the ground from the side, narrowly missing Amanda's skin in the process.

"Gee thanks for getting here so quickly."

"Don't mention it."

10. The Magnificent Tree - Hooverphonic

He'd come within an inch of losing him. Steve often forgets that his father is advancing in age and even when he behaves like he is half his age, he is sometimes brutally reminded of how mortal his father is. Mark has already outlived his own parents, which is likely the result of his profession and adherence to a healthier lifestyle, but this still could not protect him from the minor heart attack.

Steve palms his forehead, the anxiety causing him to feel unsettled. He glances up at the older man and blanches at the sight of his patriarch appearing so weak, so fragile.

Steve places a hand onto his father's forearm, noticing the warmth of his skin and reminds himself that he is _still here._ That is reassurance enough.


End file.
